Cruise Destinations

The 120th anniversary of the founding of Norway's Hurtigruten this summer brings a rare opportunity to travel off the beaten track. The coastal express, which provides a scheduled service to ports between Bergen and Kirkenes, is to make 11 visits to Lyngenfjord (above). On-board concerts and menus inspired by the 1890s when pioneering seaman Richard With founded the service will feature on voyages between June 21 and July 2. Hurtigruten has never before sailed into the fjord on its regular itineraries, but during this 11-day period a ship will stop there while travelling south between Skjervoy and Tromsø. The 50-mile-long [...]

The biggest cruise ship ever to enter the River Tyne tied up at North Shields yesterday, bringing more than 2,350 passengers and almost 1,000 crew to the North-East. At 92,500 gross registered tons, MSC Magnifica is six per cent bigger than the previous record holder, Holland America's Eurodam - which took me to Port of Tyne two years ago - and is just a foot longer than Queen Elizabeth 2, which visited in 2008, shortly before sailing into retirement. Magnifica, on a round-Britain voyage, is the first cruise ship in the Tyne this year; her next port of call will [...]

We've seen the never-before innovations to come on Royal Caribbean's Quantum of the Seas; now we know where the ship will be sailing when it starts earning its keep, in autumn 2014. The 4,180-passenger vessel will be based at Cape Liberty in Bayonne, New Jersey - which Royal likes to remind us is part of New York Harbour. For Brits flying to join a cruise, it's an easy 20-minute transfer from Newark airport. Quantum's itineraries will include seven and eight-night sailings to the Bahamas, eight and 11-night cruises to the eastern Caribbean, and a 12-night route to the southern Caribbean. [...]

We must be an orderly and well-behaved bunch of passengers on board Queen Elizabeth this week. At each port of call so far - first Funchal, Madeira, then Santa Cruz on La Palma, and today another Santa Cruz, in Tenerife, Captain Alistair Clark has announced at about 5.30 p.m. that "everyone is back on board and we are ready to sail." It's a pleasant change from the last-minute panics over late arrivals and no-shows that I have seen on some ships. It's certainly a sign that the 1,941 British passengers, and the 98 others of various nationalities including Americans, Canadians, [...]

There are 2,039 of us on this Queen Elizabeth "Iberian Adventure," as the Cunard brochure describes the 12-day cruise to Madeira, the Canaries, and Lisbon. That means the ship, which carries 2,092 passengers when every one of its 1,046 cabins has two occupants, is pretty near full. After three full days at sea, there can have been few who were not ready to stretch their legs ashore when we arrived in Funchal, Madeira, yesterday. The weather was not quite as warm and sunny as we had been promised, but the morning at least was bright until cloud began to shroud [...]

Champagne and strawberry welcome to QE's Cabin 8035 Enough of the interminable British winter. I have escaped, and will be spending the next few days on board Cunard's Queen Elizabeth. We left Southampton on Sunday and will arrive in Funchal, Madeira on Thursday; the following few days will be spent in the Canaries, where temperatures are forecast to be hitting the 80s. It's my seventh cruise with Cunard and my second time on this ship. I travelled down to Gran Canaria on her shortly after she was launched in 2010. A video of the magnificent naming ceremony, which took place [...]